Dear Dark Passenger
by bonusvampirus
Summary: Lumen tells Hannah how she got her Dark Passenger back.


Title: Dear Dark Passenger  
Summary: Lumen tells Hannah how she got her Dark Passenger back.  
Rating: M for talk of sex and murder  
Word Count: 1,258  
Disclaimer: Showtime owns Dexter and all related trademarks. I do not in any way profit from the use of these trademarks.  
Pairings: Dexter Morgan/Hannah McKay/Lumen Pierce  
Contains: polyamory  
Warnings: rape discussion, murder

"There's something that I don't understand," Hannah said, looking up from the dinner she'd made them.

"Okay?" Lumen said.

"You got rid of it," Hannah said. "Your... Dark Passenger, or whatever Dexter calls it. He said that you left Miami because yours went away."

Lumen nodded. "It did. And I did. But..." She shook her head. "It came back." Lumen took a bite and chewed it slowly, thoughtfully. Hannah waited for her. "I never wanted it to go. I guess that's kind of fucked up, but the night it left, I actually tried to hold onto it..."

"Why?" Hannah asked.

Lumen shrugged. "Because I knew I couldn't stay in Miami without it. It was the key to my life here. With Dexter. And I liked what I had with him. And, in truth, I liked _It_, too." She took a deep breath. "I liked the way that It felt after a kill: like having this warm, soft, purring cat wrapped around your soul. I liked how It told me things. I like how, when I had It, for once in my life I felt sure of myself." Lumen stabbed down hard on her steak. "Looking back, I don't think It was ever planning to leave me for good. I think It just wanted to give me some time to realize that I wasn't just resigned to It. It wasn't even that I just wanted It around because it was an essential part of my life with Dexter. I _liked_ It, and if I could never be with Dexter again, I'd still want It around." Lumen took another careful bite, and Hannah took a bite of her own because she didn't know what to say. "Is that sick?" Lumen asked when she finished chewing.

"No," Hannah said. "I think Dexter likes his, too. At the very least, I don't think he knows who he'd be without it."

They both glanced over at his half-cleaned plate. He'd been called away to a crime scene halfway through dinner, which was a shame, because Hannah hadn't been over to fix them dinner in weeks. The three of them really didn't spend enough time together as... whatever it was they were.

"When it came back," Lumen said, "It felt... amazing. Like..." she took a deep breath. "Like the best sex I'd ever had and like randomly running into an old friend I'd thought had died and suddenly knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life again."

"Like running into an old friend you'd thought had died, having really great sex with him, and then deciding to marry him?" Hannah offered up.

Lumen smirked. "The weird thing was, when it came back into me, I realized that I'd felt it happen the first time, too. I just hadn't realized what I was feeling. The first time, I'd been..." She glanced over at Harrison, who was eating in front of the television, absolutely transfixed by whatever Spider-Man was getting up to. Hannah followed her gaze, then they looked at each other and silently agreed that it was okay, and Lumen went on: "I'd been bleeding and screaming and crying and I felt... Like someone had heard me. Just for a second. It was the weirdest feeling because I knew that they weren't going to stop and that help wasn't actually coming, and I didn't feel any strong and the pain didn't dull, but I felt... I guess at the time it just felt like I wasn't going to die alone. And then later, when they moved me and I just _knew_ that they were going to kill me, It was the voice that kept whispering _No. We're not going to die here..._ And I knew it wasn't mine. _I_ was ready to die back that. But It wasn't. It told me what to do. To chew on the ropes. To fight Dexter... to fight and _fight and fight_ until I was okay. It saved my life... For all that Dexter talks about It being a darkness and something evil, _It saved my life_, and I think It saved his life too."

"You do?" Hannah asked.

"Alone in his mother's blood for days? _Something_ saved Dexter's life back in 1973, even if he was too young to remember it."

Hannah just sat there, silent and unmoving, and let the reality of that wash over her.

"I think that's what It does. It saves your life, and then It makes you pay it back. I knew that I'd feel in control again if I killed, and all I could think about was killing _them_, and It encouraged me to follow through with that. It was the little voice that kept telling me that it was _okay_ to kill them. That it was the right thing to do. That it was the _only_ right thing to do. And then it left me and I thought 'Alright. It was only with me for as long as I needed it...'"

"But then it just came back out of the blue?"

"No," Lumen said. "It came back when..." She sighed. "There was this girl. And this guy who hurt her. And I thought about Jordan and Alex and Cole and Dan and Boyd... watching all of them get exactly what they deserved and doing it myself a couple of times... and I... I wanted to..."

"You wanted to kill him?"

"I _wanted_ to kill him, but I wanted it in the way that..." Lumen put her fork down and held up her hands in brief surrender. "Damn. In the way that_normal_ people want to kill people, I guess. I could think 'I want to kill him,' but I could actually imagine _doing_ it, the way that I could imagine doing it to all of them. I couldn't imagine the planning and the stalking and setting up the kill room and actually _doing_ it. That little voice that told me that it was okay and that I _could_ do it just wasn't there."

"So you... what? Summoned it like a spirit? Begged it to come back?"

Lumen snorted. "No. I got fucking _pissed_ at It. I cried. I asked It how It could do this to me like it was my cheating boyfriend or something. I just sat there for _hours_ and hated myself and hated It and hated everything because thanks to It _I knew what I had to do_ but _I couldn't do it without it_. And then I went to bed and... It was that exact same feeling from before. Like someone had just whispered '_Okay, Lumen. I hear you._' And suddenly I just felt this rush of... and it felt _amazing_. I was up all night and I was happier than I could remember being in a long time. And since I couldn't sleep anyway and I already knew he was guilty, I went out and I killed the guy. And it felt _great_, but something was still missing, and I knew exactly what it was, so..."

"So you came to Miami."

"By five in the morning I was boarding a plane. And I knew that it was impulsive and that it could end horribly and I'm sorry that I sprung it on you two but—"

"Shhhh," Hannah said. Then, moving very slowly because this relationship was new to all three of them still, and in any case it was always a good idea to give Lumen plenty of warning before you touched her, Hannah leaned over and softly kissed Lumen. "I'm not," she said.


End file.
